Poll - Are video games getting easier or harder?
Wednesday, April 18th, 2007 at 2:10pm by Staff
Control schemes for video games continue to evolve, with most consumers adapting pretty well. Despite this, occasionally a game comes along in which you repeatedly die and return back to a save point no matter how well you master your joystick (or in Wii’s case, magic wand).
This week we want to know:
April 18th, 2007 at 3:03 pm
Not even a question…games are getting much easier. When NES games were coming out, you considered it a real achievement to complete some of them; they were excruciatingly challenging. I expect to complete GameCube and Wii titles…and generally have no problem doing so.
The original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Battletoads, some of the Mega Man games…just to name a few older titles that are 1,000x more difficult than any of the top titles of today.
April 18th, 2007 at 5:18 pm
Well, I put down “harder”, only because you didn’t have an option for “longer”…
I used to be able to finish games in the past, but not anymore. I don’t know if this is because they became harder, longer, or I have much less time to play them.
April 18th, 2007 at 6:05 pm
Most games have become easier, I think, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Some of the games on the NES were just annoyingly hard. They had frustrating segments that, if I were to play them today, I wouldn’t bother with. Ninja Turtles on the NES comes to mind. The dam level, with the electric seaweed.
Back when I was young it’s all I knew. These days I would say “screw this, it’s bad game design” and stop playing.
As hard as that level was, I kept trying when I was younger (never did beat it though, and have no desire to these days).
Don’t get me wrong, I like a challenge in my games, and there are modern games which offer a challenge (we also have multiple difficulty levels in games these days, I think many people overlook that when judging a games difficulty).
So yes, overall I think games have gotten easier, but I also submit that they have become more fun because of it.
Obviously there are a lot of classic games that are still a ton of fun (especially most Nintendo games) but you have to admit that 90% of the stuff on the SNES and below were complete crap. There are thousands of SNES/Genesis/NES/Atari games, and I can only name probably 100 between them that are actually worth playing still.
Nostalgia is a big part in our fond memories of games past, going back and playing a lot of the crap we used to find “fun” can some times be a real eye opener. Again though, there are some classics that are still awesome, but not because of their difficulty.
April 18th, 2007 at 7:19 pm
If you want me to keep voting then lose the obnoxious, talking, pop-up ads.
April 18th, 2007 at 7:59 pm
Easier? Or is it that we’re getting better!!!!
April 18th, 2007 at 8:12 pm
Video games are for sure getting easier. Most NES platformers are insanely difficult. I was never able to get past the third level of Kid Icarus. It might have been that most games back then had no learning curve.
April 18th, 2007 at 8:30 pm
I was leaning toward easier… then I played F-Zero GX and saw that game can be impossibly harder than they were before. The developers at SEGA are sadists!
Anyone who’s played story mode will know what I’m talking about.
April 18th, 2007 at 8:59 pm
The difficult, throw-your-controller-against-the-wall, NES games were engaging because of their difficulty. The sense of accomplishment was in literally beating the game, and all of the challenges it threw at you.
Today’s games are engaging because the story and scene is typically better. Sure, there may be some “wow, that’s tough” parts, but it seems the main goal of games today is to advance the storyline or progress to the next cutscene. The sense of accomplishment today tends to come from completing the story, not necessarily “beating” the game.
April 18th, 2007 at 11:25 pm
I just got Yoshi’s Island DS last weekend.
Fun game but not horribly challenging. My main complaint is it’s to easy to get extra lives. I’m up to 163 or so.
April 18th, 2007 at 11:36 pm
Aside from a few levels in a game or so, much easier.
There are still a few ones that are good as far as difficulty goes though. F-Zero GX, Gunstar Super Heroes (on hard mode. everything else is child’s play) and some others.
But even though it seems as if all games are getting easier, it’s not always the truth. Excite Truck starts off ridiculously easy, but then comes the Super Excite challenges and you really have to rip to get ‘em done. I think that pacing is just getting a lot better.
April 19th, 2007 at 1:44 am
this is a question that has been flying through my head since i beat the minish cap and twilight princess..
is it that i am just getting older (20 now) or the games are generally getting easier.
when i was maybe 10 or 11 i got zelda:link to the past on the original gameboy. I didnt understand the game at all, i simply got it cause my moms friend’s son had it and i thought it was the best that you could steal from the store clerk, and then go back in the shop and be electricuted by some weird gun he held which no one else had access to. And as far as i can remember the last part i got to before i quit playing the game was when you get Bow-Wow and( i dont know if i could do it now) but i could never figure out what to do after that.
Minish cap i used some walk through to beat, and twilight princess i did it all on my own. so it might just be all of us nintendo generation kids are getting older or the games are getting easier, and i am the type to stop playing a game if it gets to hard or i have tried 4 times on a mission and if i die in the same spot every time i quit the game and most likly dont touch it again
April 19th, 2007 at 3:31 am
I think one thing that makes the games easier is the controllers having more buttons. More buttons allows for more features. I love the Metroid series but I seriously suck at the original. So would the original Metroid be easier if you had the ability to shoot diagonally? I think so.
Technologically the games can do more too. Think about the jump from The Legend of Zelda to Zelda: A Link to the Past. Suddenly you can swing your sword in a curved motion covering a greater area.
People find ways to make the fights in Twilight Princess harder including not learning all the fighting techniques and, as I think I’ll do on my next run through, use the Ordon sword all the time and avoid the Master sword which deals more damage. People like using only certain weapons in FPS games that do less damage in the same manner.
So in a sense, although the player can (sometimes)put a handicape on their playing, they may not want to after playing through the game. Not everyone thinks of replay value.
~ Loknar64
Who was also the guy who wrote about Yoshi’s Island DS.
April 19th, 2007 at 3:28 pm
Well i guess i did grow upp on movie tie in games
April 19th, 2007 at 7:26 pm
The older games are harder, but the newer ones are longer and more frustrating, which is worse for me….